


bagman sleazy

by drphil



Category: Better Call Saul (TV), Breaking Bad
Genre: A little Humiliation, Caretaking, D/s if you squint, Dirty Talk, Hand Jobs, Infidelity Mention, M/M, Sort of hurt/comfort, brokeback mountain in the desert, dirty bickering, takes place during bcs s05e08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-02-23 00:47:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23569696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drphil/pseuds/drphil
Summary: Jimmy's hands settle on Mike’s shoulders, rooted in his lap. Mike’s warm. Nothing comes into focus, still, but the lack of movement beneath him grounds him somehow. His toes dig into the loose desert sand, solidifying it. He feels Mike’s bored eyes locked on him, his only protest, and opens his mouth to say something prophetic, but his voice is gone.“That isn’t gonna work,” Mike says.Now with a sequel:i've got this thing that i consider my only art
Relationships: Mike Ehrmantraut/Jimmy McGill | Saul Goodman
Comments: 23
Kudos: 71





	bagman sleazy

The night sky in the desert isn’t a sky, it’s a fucking pit. It’s a long, black expanse, a liquid tar that seeps through every crack in Jimmy’s mind, his vision, until there’s nothing but confusion and an eerily pleasant sense of total and complete insignificance.

His muscles are jelly from shouldering the sacks of money, his fingers on fire from clutching at the rough straps, his foot aches where the shitty cactus split his toe in two, his mouth’s full of cotton. Everything is sticky, damp, cold, dry, bone-dry, fucking arid. He doesn’t know where his phone is, he’s too tired to worry about it. It’s nicer to think about where he could be, what he could do. He could get up and just run, run far away, break his ankle in the prairie dog holes, get caught and tortured by Lalo’s cartel buddies, maybe they’d slice his ears off and he wouldn’t have to hear Kim’s voice in his head anymore— 

A sharp crack slices through the blissful darkness, a flash of white, reflection of the moonlight. Mike’s spreading out a fucking thermal blanket. Yeah. Why _wouldn’t_ the venerable fart have a fucking catastrophic emergency blanket, specifically? 

Jimmy doesn’t realize he’s eyeing it, his vision’s blurred. Mike does. “I got two of these,” he says, in that rocky, irritated tone that passes as amicable, “You want one?”

Why wouldn’t he have _two?_ "No thanks.” Jimmy forces his shoulders down, stops tensing up, tearing his eyes away, back to his shitty little glowstick. 

“Gets cold fast,” Mike presses.

First-century cub scout. “I’m fine,” Jimmy says stiffly. Fuck you. “Thanks.”

Mike gives him the physical embodiment of an eye roll as he tucks the blanket around his shoulders, loudly, one might add. “Suit yourself.”

When his watchful eyes disappear, Jimmy’s feel free again, staring up at the sky, falling shut, tracing across the mesas, drifting closed, and, once or twice, lingering on the blanket. The extra one Mike offered is discarded aside, too far away to grab, bury, maybe rip to shreds.

But all spread out, it’s white shapes, really, the longer you look at it, sharp, distorted reflections of the moonlight, soft highlights of yellow from the glowstick, the twinkle of the stars unburdened by city lights. He rocks the light back and forth, watching the thin lines it maps across the crinkles of the blanket, how they warp with each breath Mike takes. It glows golden, like the thermos he’d rescued from his cupholder, beat-up, worthless metal like it, too. The shine kind of burns. If he’d close his eyes, it could be dark again. If he’d stop looking at the blanket. If his eyes weren’t so dry. If he could have a sip of something that wasn’t fucking urine. If his ears could stop ringing with the unending sounds of gunfire, he could doze off and get out of here faster, or have a nice dream, or die in his sleep. If he could— 

“The fuck are you looking at?” Mike grumbles heavily. 

“Nothing,” Jimmy says, but his voice sounds too loud coming out of his throat.

“Get your beauty sleep.” Mike rolls over. “You’re gonna need it.”

So, the constellations all blend into each other, once you stare at them long enough. Jimmy can’t get comfortable with the way every fucking inch of his body throbs with each breath, not that the rocky desert is reputably comfortable. A bird caws in the distance, no doubt the harbinger of death. Mike’s probably a snorer. That’ll be great. It was just a few short, sweet hours ago that he had a car, a job, water, and seven million dollars. Now he’s just got seven million dollars. Christ, he’d pay three for that hard, brassy New Mexico well water, straight from the tap. He’d pay the rest for a cigarette. He tugs his shirt up over his nose, hoping the condensation from his breath will marvelously quench his thirst, until he feels the hardened blood on his collar and he pulls it away with a noise of disgust. 

“Are you _still_ awake?”

“You didn’t say goodnight.” Jimmy hunches over his knees, bristling. He wishes he could take the debauched shirt off, but he’s freezing, or he’s just overrun by chills, he can’t tell. 

_“You’ll be okay,”_ Mike had told him on the drive over, when he was shaking deliriously in his own passenger seat, unable to fucking function. He wouldn’t be. “You’re in shock.” He’s not cut out for this. He can’t keep any promises, he can’t even stick it out as the traffickers’ bellboy. “You’re alive. Focus on that.” Kim’s head will be on a stick by tomorrow morning, and he’ll have to call her parents when he finds a signal to let them know. Love, your daughter’s husband — surprise! — friend of the cartel.

“Jimmy,” Mike says, and Jimmy blinks; his name out of Mike’s mouth seems like an auditory hallucination. 

“Can’t sleep.” He sounds like an asshole. 

Mike sighs, long, loud, like Jimmy brought home another detention slip. “Count some fucking sheep. For your own sake.”

Because he needs a lecture from Paw Paw about bedtime. When Jimmy doesn’t answer him, eyes fixed down on the ground, Mike sits up. 

“You aren’t listening,” he says, but he doesn’t sound irate about it. Well, not as much as usual. “C’mere.”

Jimmy grants him a glance up and it feels like he’s had way too much sun, ‘cause the fucker’s motioning for him, scoffing impatiently into the night sky.

“Come here,” he’s saying, steadfast, pointing, and Jimmy’s given up trying to speak or concentrate. Turns out that deliriousness stews itself pretty quick, driving him to move, for some reason or another. 

He fixates on the sensation of the loose ground shifting beneath him, dropping his tired knees onto the earth. His loafers dig into the sand as he slides one knee forward, then the other, crawling on bended fucking knee across the campsite. 

Mike doesn’t specifically acknowledge Jimmy when he comes to sit back on his haunches — a good foot or two away, he’s half-convinced Mike’s about to throw a punch — until Mike exhales with a grunt, a hand rising to cover his face, dragging down to pinch the bridge of his nose. It must be hard, not being an ornery bitch for but a moment over here on Planet Ehrmantraut. 

“I need you at a hundred percent, or we are not going to get through this.” Mike turns his whole body towards him, the light of the blanket refracting like an assault. “And we _will_ be getting through this, whether you like it or not. You made this bed. Remember that.” 

Jimmy wants to lurch forward, grab him by the collar. He wants to open his mouth but he’ll retch if he does, so he shakes his head instead, waiting for the shot.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Mike says instead, and his voice grows eerily calm. “No use in worryin’ about that now. You worry. A lot.”

Jimmy’s face betrays him, brow furrowing in anger. As opposed to…? Does he not know where they _are?_ Old senile fuck, Jimmy sucks in a breath, leans in— 

Mike pushes off the ground and grabs him by the shoulders, stalling him mid-insult.

“I’m gonna make sure I get us through this,” he says steadily, holding Jimmy’s eye. “I will get you out of here. But you cannot shut this out. You _need_ to help me. Can you do that?”

Mike’s so close he can feel his breath on his face — somehow not awful by now, by the way — trace the heavy sheen on his brow. Part of him expects to spontaneously have some revelation that Mike’s not really that cantankerous, he’s hurt, you can see it in his eyes or some shit like that, but the guy just looks beat. His thumbs are either digging harder into Jimmy’s flesh or Jimmy’s leaning further into it; he suddenly feels as exhausted as Mike looks. It’s relieving to be propped up. He doesn’t respond.

“When we’re home, and safe, you can feel as fucked up as you want.” Mike releases him, crossing his arms, leaning back against the tree. Guess the big pep talk is over. “Or have fun tryin’ to keep up tomorrow.”

Jimmy doesn’t move from where Mike left him, tilted, staring, roping him into eye contact that neither of them wants. He can still feel the burn of his hands clamped around his shoulders, securing him in place. Mike wants to help himself. Mike tried to help him earlier. Mike doesn’t need help. Mike's got something to lose. Mike doesn’t need him.

Either way, he needs Mike. 

Jimmy rises to just his knees, sways a bit, like he’s drunk. Every movement feels like slicing through deep, dark water, thick clouds, hypergravity. He reaches down to plant a tired hand on the ground, and then, disassociated body miles ahead of his disassociated brain, hikes a leg over Mike’s knees. 

He roots himself there, forcing Mike’s legs together beneath him, chasing the foothold he’d had just a moment ago. The dimness helps. He can’t see the reflection of the foil anymore; it’s just a deep orange, navy blue blur. His hands settle on Mike’s shoulders, making the blanket crunch, and he almost hears it. Mike’s warm. Nothing comes into focus, still, but the lack of movement beneath him grounds him somehow. His toes dig into the dirt, solidifying it. He feels Mike’s bored eyes locked on him, his only protest, and opens his mouth to say something prophetic, but his voice doesn’t return. 

“That isn’t gonna work,” Mike says.

Jimmy reaches out, forms a tight fist in the plastic sheet, and rips it down off Mike’s shoulders, into a crumpled heap between them. Mike still doesn’t budge, doesn’t even look away. 

It surprises even Jimmy himself that he doesn’t make another move. He lets his weight sink down into Mike’s lap, stateless. He’s not sure this was a conscious decision, but he can feel the gentle rise and fall of Mike’s chest, and the gruffness of his voice in his ears, and the relief of the blissful fucking silence. Intuitively, he waits for the “but.” 

Slowly, with a markedly exaggerated sigh, Mike’s hands come to either side of his waist. There it is. 

“What’re you doing?” he still asks, dry, unmoving, but Jimmy can feel his eyes narrowing, boring into him. God, it suddenly feels good. or, it feels good just to feel it. He wants Mike’s hands to stay on him like that, grip the reins, still him.

Fixed down, Jimmy doesn’t say a thing. It’s nice not to want to anymore. Just stares, wavers a little. He almost smiles. 

This must turn Mike on a vast amount, Jimmy shutting the fuck up, because his hands start to tighten around Jimmy’s sides, digging in, drawing him in to shore. He lets out another grouchy huff, a final jab, and cocks his head up at Jimmy, eyebrows raised.

“So, this is what you want?” he says, simple, blunt.

Jimmy’s gaze doesn’t meet his, it just goes dark. His head drops to Mike’s shoulder, folding into him, brow heavy against his own knuckles. It’s like closing your fist around a wall, how solid Mike is beneath his dead weight, how much he seems to surround him. He can’t tell whose breath he’s following. His head swims. He vaguely registers the scent of Mike’s shirt as he breathes it in; he smells like sweat, and dirt, and yeah, a hint of old guy.

It’s another shock to his system that Mike doesn’t throw him off. It’s enough to wake him up, anchor his toes in the sand when he feels Mike’s hands pulling on him; he’s sinking further back against the tree trunk, like a gesture of defeat, but with the confidence that they both know that ain’t the case. He’s letting Jimmy take what he needs. He knows something. Something about Jimmy that he must not be privy to himself, too small, too checked out, spinning too out of control to pinpoint. Mike’s choosing to help him.

Jimmy swallows that down, breathes, and then his mouth is pressing to the side of Mike’s throat, shaky, groaning. It's as if he’s extending an olive branch, trying to give him something back. Or, selfishly seizing what Mike’s granted him and just wrenching something else from it, too.

The challenge to his own ethos fuels him, has him gripping Mike’s collar and trying to yank him up against his lips when he feels a large, strong hand in the center of his chest, a weight that nearly knocks the wind out of him. 

The engine stalls, stunted, until Jimmy registers the pressure being removed. 

“Listen,” Mike growls, resigned, dropping his hand from Jimmy’s shirt to settle on the clasp of his belt, “Do not fucking _kiss_ me.”

“Whoa, I,” Jimmy coughs out, hands frozen in place where Mike had stopped them. The words are suddenly coming out before he can stop them, knee-jerk reflexive, a habituality. “I-I’m not asking you t—”

“Shut up. You don’t know what you’re asking.”

His fly’s undone. He goes slack.

Mike’s about as romantic as a judge in traffic court, tugging at his slacks one-handed like he’s going through the motions, contrary to the sudden pounding of Jimmy’s heart, the disorientation of having Mike untucking his salmon-colored shirt from his pants, reality striking him hard across the face and making his desperate path back to existence a fucking maze. Mike acts like he’s expecting this, hell, he probably was, but he pauses at the waistband of his boxers, just for a moment. 

“This is what you want?” he says again, even slower, and it’s fucking infuriating, but Jimmy doesn’t feel anything bubble to the surface. His unstrung face falls.

“Yeah,” he says, weak.

Of course Mike doesn’t bother to take his pants down, or move the fucking blanket, it crunches with every movement of his hands. Strangely, that doesn’t bother Jimmy, or he doesn’t pay it much mind because Mike is spitting into his goddamn palm as he hooks his fingers in the waistband of Jimmy’s underwear. Jimmy has to turn away, stares blindly over Mike’s shoulder, can’t bear to make eye contact with him as he feels his fist around his cock. 

“Oh, god,” he says aloud, his hands tightening around Mike’s shoulders.

“Just relax,” Mike tells him, but his voice is softer, even lower, and Jimmy fights to listen to it, fingers trailing down his front. He instinctively wants to grasp Mike’s arm between them, keep a handle on whatever the fuck is happening, but for some reason touching him feels off-limits, so his hands fall limply to his sides. Oh, god. 

Mike’s _slow._ And, somehow, it’s _good._ Jimmy doesn’t even realize how hard he is until he feels the folds of Mike’s palm wrapped around him, massaging him like a sore muscle, until Jimmy’s so filled out that his calloused fingertips can’t form a perfect circle anymore. Mike gives his cock one long, firm stroke, like an assessment, the weight of it sturdy against his groin; Jimmy’s breath swirls in his lungs and he lets it all out at once, shaky and loose.

His own fists open and close at his sides, nails digging into his palms, either unable to or too scared to reach out, make any contact. What is this, atonement? His hips don’t comply, sinking shamelessly into Mike’s grasp, knees sliding further into the sand. 

At least Mike doesn’t look at him, not really. He leisurely pushes a lapel of the shirt out of the way, a little bemused at the way Jimmy’s thighs clamp around him, or how desperate he is, or maybe how small he thinks his dick is, who knows what the fucker’s trying to subliminally put in his head. Jimmy doesn’t care. He lets his eyelids flutter shut, leaving him to think what he wants. 

“That’s it,” Mike murmurs, and his free hand smooths over Jimmy’s front, running beneath his shirt and carding through the hair on his navel, and it’s sort of nice. He doesn’t pick up the pace, but it’s such a note of encouragement that Jimmy shamefully lets out a little, quiet gasp, jerking in his hands.

“You know, I wasn’t really picturing this,” Jimmy says quickly, in an effort to cover up his slip. Language almost doesn’t feel incongruous anymore. 

Mike indulges his babbling. “Yeah? This ain’t good enough?”

“No! No,” Jimmy protests, throws his hands up, round shoulders squaring. Mike still doesn’t change pace, jacking him off almost idly, and Jimmy trails off, trying to soften back into it. “I, uh, just assumed I’d be…”

“What?” Mike almost chuckles. Maybe this is putting him in a good mood. “Bent over an oasis?”

“Jesus,” Jimmy hisses, glad the night air hides how flushed his face is. “No. Uh, I didn’t think I’d— I thought you- _you’d_ want—” 

“Don’t you worry about me,” Mike says easily, like this is normal, or sane. “No shame in asking for it.”

Jimmy loathes the way he expresses with his whole fucking body, biting his tongue in his cheek, crushing his thumbs in his fists where Mike can’t see. 

“You need it, frankly,” Mike continues, and his hand gains speed, minutely, such a small amount that Jimmy wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been moving at a glacial pace to begin with. “Take it easy.”

Jimmy lets his head fall back, and his slackened mouth can only seem to form words that sound like miserable whimpers as he says softly, “Okay. Okay.”

A groan comes out with it, and he raises one of his hands to his mouth, biting his knuckle to stop the flood of whatever the fuck else is going to come out of there. He lets his elbow rest heavy, finger hanging on his teeth, his jaw, making his noisy breathing noisier. 

This must amuse Mike, because Jimmy can hear the fucking smirk on his lips when he says, “Tell me something.”

Jimmy gapes back down at him, mouth full of his own fist. “What?”

“What did you picture?”

Jimmy’s still staring at him dumbly, but he feels his heart thud heavily against his ribs, dropping his hand to hold it protectively against his shirt, drool probably smearing the blood.

“Go on. What'd you think about?” Mike urges. “You imagined somethin’, you told me.”

Jimmy hones in, slowly, carefully. The old bastard is trying to get him off.

“God,” he exhales sharply. “Shut the fuck… I don’t need the, the histrionics.”

“I wanna know,” Mike says lightly. World’s most antiquated cocktease. Yeah, Jimmy should’ve known this was gonna cost him. “Enlighten me.” 

Having brought Jimmy back to a loss for words, Mike leans back, unabashedly watching how Jimmy ruts up into his hand. "When you think I'm not looking," he carries on, in that fucking low, rough, one-note octave, so _heavy_ on the shitty know-it-all inflection, how does he _do_ that, “Maybe even when you’re with your ' _wife_.' What do I do to you, huh?”

Jimmy’s shifting helplessly over his unmoving legs, eyes squeezing shut. “God, Mike, Jesus. What? What—” 

Mike leers up a bit, moves in closer, and his free hand comes to Jimmy’s jaw, closing around it. Just like it had earlier, when he’d found him at his car, a shaking, messy heap on the desert road. 

“Breathe,” he reprimands, again, and Jimmy hates the way he bends, falls right into his hold.

Jimmy decides he can allow his hand to fall to Mike’s shirt, hoping his bloody spit saturates it. He swallows under the constraint of Mike’s fingers, feeling his skin roll against the bone of his jaw, and lets some long, exaggerated breath out. The end of it gets choked off as Mike circles the head of his dick, spreading the slick of his precome around in his palm, dragging so rawly over such a sensitive spot that it’s a fucking battle to keep from going rigid in every muscle in his body.

Jimmy whines, like he’s injured, and the shithead just offers him half a smile at the mess he’s making. 

He doesn’t mean to grip his hands in Mike’s shirt, he doesn’t even realize he’s dipped so far forward til Mike’s fingers shift under his chin and tilt it up, forcing him to quit pulling at the material, stop rolling his hips into the tight circle of his fist.

“Eyes up here,” Mike says, “Easy. Focus.”

Asshole is playing with him. Working him up, blaming him for responding to it, it’s unfair. It’s sick, outdated persecution, an old-fashioned hustle. An attempt to elicit something. He wants— God damn it.

Jimmy grits his teeth, giving in.

“I, god, I picture— You always, you make me blow you...” The images are hazy, quick flashes as he tries to rack his cloudy brain. “In the, the parking garage… My office—” 

“I make you?” Mike repeats, fingertips softening under his jaw. He hates how much tighter it makes the hold.

“I want to,” Jimmy confesses, humiliated. His dick throbs, Mike definitely feels it. “I come up with an excuse... Like, payment for, for…”

“Generous.” Mike probably finds it just adorable that he has to qualify his sexual fantasies to himself, fantasies, plural. “Always liked money, though.” 

“We fight about it.” Jimmy doesn’t know why he’s still talking. “I, I offer, sometimes you tell me to, I always wind up having to… to suck you off, ah—”

Thankfully, Mike doesn’t sound as condescending as Jimmy expects, genuinely curious when he says, “You want me to be mean?” 

“You’re always fuckin’ mean,” Jimmy snaps. His hand falls to Mike’s arm, fingertips ghosting the thick material of his shirt where it folds in the bend of his elbow. He wants to say fuck no, this is so much better, even _please_ drifts through his mind, but all that he manages is, “No. No. Don’t.”

Mike smiles. “You any good at it?”

“What a fffff _fucking_ flirt,” Jimmy grits out. “Haven’t had any complaints.”

“Huh.” Mike trails his hand down to Jimmy’s rumpled collar, rolling the material between his finger and thumb. “Well, I’ll take that under advisement.”

Great, now Jimmy’s gotta picture that. Putting the moves on a deranged hitman is retroactively turning out to be one of his better decisions.

He doesn’t even know what else he fantasizes about, really. Kim, in some liminal space, pushing him around playfully, the way she shoves him into the mattress, the way he lets her. How her moans sound so rewarding when he does the job properly, the sting of her nails dug into his skin, the same way Mike’s fist would be, wound up tight in Jimmy’s hair, watching him fall to his knees, the sounds _he’d_ make— 

Jimmy gasps, struck with a wave that makes him aware of how close he is, grabbing at Mike’s sleeve with every ounce of strength he’s got left. He could be louder than that, if he wanted, no one’s around for miles, but he has a feeling that would result in a sloppy fist to the face. He probably wouldn’t say no to it, Mike knows what’s driving him now, he probably wants to. 

He feels his stomach curl in on itself, doubling over, and Mike’s big, sturdy hand is on the back of his neck to pull him in, guide him down, faithfully requiting.

"C'mon," Mike's murmuring, approving. He presses Jimmy into his chest, where he can feel Mike's words rumbling against his ear. "Right there. Let me. Let—"

He comes with a ragged, disjointed breath, an open-mouthed stutter against Mike’s neck, held down against the current. It’s not the most transcendent orgasm he's ever had, it's rocky, detached from his body, but he feels duly gutted as he clings to Mike, like he’d be lost adrift anywhere else. The blood rushes in his ears, dulling the feeling of fingers on the nape of his neck spreading into his hair, stroking it, and he shudders into the gentle circles of Mike’s fist until it all comes to a stop.

His eyes wrench themselves open, bleary and strained, and he looks down to see that he came all over the fucking space blanket. Vacantly, he watches it drip down the sharp angles of the plastic from what feels like lightyears away.

Mike’s goatee catches in his hair with each heaving breath and he makes a plan to just stay there until Mike says something, but nothing comes. Mike’s warm hand just drags heavy across his back, up his spine, down his lifeless muscles. At some point he fits his palm around Jimmy’s jaw and nudges him into the spot between his ear and his collarbone.

Lying there for a moment, listening to the fucking voice echoing in his head, “ _Breathe,_ ” he can hear that Mike’s panting just about as heavily as he is. He takes it as permission to make a contented hum of a noise, sedated, moaning under his breath against the rough canvas of Mike’s shirt as his heart begins to slow again.

“You're welcome,” Mike says finally. He’s much bigger than he seems, actually, the width of his shoulders suddenly expansive where Jimmy turns to mouth against the column of his neck once again, though noticeably more unsteady this time.

“Hey.” Mike doesn't let go. “I said—”

Jimmy’s shoving the cum-covered blanket away anyway, trying to weasel his way into Mike’s cargo pants when Mike stops him, the hand holding him down now pushing him back, though noticeably not as hard as the first time. 

“Unlike you,” he says, using the space between them to start refastening Jimmy’s pants, “I’d like to conserve my energy.”

Jimmy glares down at his hands, batting them away to pull his own zipper back up.

“Not sayin’ I’ll never cash in on it,” Mike adds, and even if it’s just for Jimmy’s benefit, the promise still sounds auspicious.

“Seniors aren’t known for their stamina,” Jimmy says lamely, still out of breath, watching Mike try to scrape the rest of the cum off his hand onto the ruined blanket. It’s not like they have any water to spare to clean up. He balls it up and tosses it towards Jimmy’s side of the camp, reaching for the rejected one next to them. 

Jimmy crawls off him as he spreads that out, wrapping it around his shoulders just as he had before, and Jimmy falls in next to him, slumping against his side. He doesn’t try to get under the blanket or anything like that, but touching it seems tolerable. 

“Oh, no,” Mike says, “You are not sleeping here.”

“I’ll move,” Jimmy replies, eyes already drifting shut.

“I am not fucking doing this. Get outta here.”

“Can you zip it? Some of us are trying to get some shut-eye.” Jimmy can feel the plastic flutter as he speaks against it; he hopes the shake is only from his voice.

“I have your crusty _jizz_ on my hand—”

You’d think the worries would be gone, give him some space til tomorrow as he retires to sweet slumber, but they trickle back to flood his hollow thoughts like oxygen, second nature. You’d think they’d dissipate, that he’d have reason now to believe Mike’s bothering to help him. Maybe he’s just that pathetic, though. Maybe he’s too easy to mold, he’s just too soft for this shit, it’s comical that he’s even trying while people like Mike intuitively know that all it takes to disarm him is a word and a pat on the back. He’s always been a side job to this guy, and not even a profitable one. But maybe that’s the pitfall of it all: it’s customary, entertaining, to watch a nameless man who’s floundering to hold on, scrambling to keep up in a world he knows nothing about, trying to lead when he should be standing next to the one in charge. It’s a catch-22. Jimmy’s the catch.

Or, maybe Mike cares. Deep down. Really, really fucking deep down. Maybe it’s up to Jimmy not to.

The dull ache has already started to seep back into his bones, burning with his pulse as he lies back against the tree bark. He does relent, managing not to swaddle himself in Mike’s makeshift duvet, but he still lies close enough to hear the steady cadence of his breathing, gather some of the warmth from whatever he’s conserving under that damn thing, and Mike lets him. It helps. It did get pretty cold, out here in the dark.

He doesn’t sleep like a baby, but he does sleep, fades in and out for a nice, long while. When he wakes, the blanket is draped across him, too.

He finds he can stomach it.

**Author's Note:**

> convenient link to sequel: [i've got this thing that i consider my only art](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24184588)


End file.
